Struggling to create visual content? Or not seeing the engagement you want?
You’re not alone. That’s why Venngage polled over 500 online marketers to see how much visual content was a part of their marketing strategy in 2018 and what they planned to change in 2019.
We also asked them what types of visual formats were working (and what types weren’t).
Here’s what we found:
1. Original Graphics, Such As Infographics, Performed Best
Even though stock photos were used most frequently, 40.2 percent of marketers said that original graphics like infographics and illustrations actually performed best.
In second place, 23.2 percent considered video crucial to their marketing strategy.
Stock photos (12.5 percent) and gifs and memes (4.5 percent) had the lowest engagement rates.
Another key point: at Venngage we find that blog posts with a higher ratio of visuals engaged readers more i.e. average time on page was higher and bounce rate was lower.
This is just one example, but it may point to the fact that using more visuals in content is just as important as the type of visuals.
It’s important to note that using lots of visuals that are optimized for organic search is a big part of Venngage’s enterprise SEO strategy. And since we increased our entire site traffic 400 percent in one year, we can confidently say it works.
2. Producing Visual Content Is Getting A Lot Cheaper
In 2016, we did a similar study and 32 percent of respondents said they used online graphic design software to create visual content. In 2018, this number increased to 49.1 percent. This is almost a 60 percent increase!
This means that marketers aren’t relying nearly as much on in-house or freelance graphic designers. In fact, only 9.8 percent of respondents said that they used a contract or freelance designer, which is a 150 percent drop from our 2016 survey.
Which explains why 42 percent of marketers said they spent less than 10 percent of their marketing budget on making visual content, which is down from 31.6 percent in 2016.
This is good news, as more marketers will be able to produce quality visual content in 2019 (and get more engagement) for less money.
3. The Biggest Struggle? Producing Visual Content Consistently
Visual content may be important to marketers, and they feel more confident producing it themselves, but they sure struggle with making it on a regular basis–34.8 percent reported this concern.
At Venngage we address this problem by consistently repurposing content. A study becomes a blog post and an infographic, which is repurposed into social media graphics. Or webinar slides are repurposed into an eBook.
Other top struggles included making great designs (31.3 percent), sourcing solid data or content (19.6 percent) and finding an audience for their visual content (14.3 percent).
At least finding an audience was less of a struggle than it was in 2016, when 24.1 percent of marketers reported this concern.
The takeaway? Marketers are increasingly seeing impactful reach from their visual content.
4. Visual Content Will Continue To Be an Important Marketing Strategy into 2019 and 2020
The majority of respondents (45.5 percent) told us that 80 percent of businesses will rely on visual content heavily as part of their content marketing strategy over the next two years.
This tells us that marketers consider visuals to be important for a business’s growth and will continue to be important into the future.
Here are the full survey results, which we made using Venngage’s timeline infographic maker:
What do you struggle with when it comes to creating visual content? What types of visual content engage your audience more? Let me know in the comments.
Read more: B2B Content Marketing Statistics and Trends